Parking Finder: Transforming Car Tracking in Crowded Lots

A UX Evolution from Challenge to Solutions

This project aims to build a mobile application that enables the employees of an IT firm to quickly and easily find their car from a busy noisy parking lot.

Problem Statement

There’s been a lot of noise pollution around the office because employees use their car alarms to find their cars in the parking lot. Help our employees find their cars without making any noise

Hypothesis: Employees should be able to quickly track and locate their cars without creating noise

The UX process overview

A Design Strategy is a detailed plan to line up a company’s brand with the desired user experience at every customer touchpoint. Ideally, this plan should be in place before even the design begins.

Design Strategy

Market Segments —Working IT employees

General Tasks — Park Car, Find Car

Technology — RFID, NFC, QR Code, Smartphone, AI Camera, Geo-fencing

Critical Success Factors- Easily locate a car from a large dense parking area

User Profile

Language — English & multilingual

General Education — Graduation & above

Domain Expertise — High

Age Group — 20–58

Expectations — Ease of use, Efficient, Effective, Memorable

Task Profile

Tasks — Park, Track & Locate Car

Environment Profile

Location — Indoor & Outdoor

Geography — Urban, IT Spaces

Workspace — Office

Lighting — Bright, dim

Sound — Medium to high

Device — smartphone

User Persona

Collecting the information from user tasks and environmental profiles, I created a user persona.

Interview Questions

Based on this Persona, I have interviewed a few IT professionals who commute to the office by their own vehicle.

1. How often do you take your car to the office?
2. How many cars do you use for commuting?
3. What blocks you from parking the car in the office parking lot?
4. Can u tell me about your experience in parking the car?
5. What problems do you face while, a. Parking the car? b. Locating your car?
6. How long does it take to locate your car from the parking lot?
7. What are your feelings about finding the car after getting back from work?
8. How many times during office hours do you take the car outside?
9. What kind of support do you require when parking the car?
10. What’s the most important thing that will make you park the car in the parking lot?
11. What's the feeling when you locate your car?
12. How can we improvise this experience?

User Scenarios

After interviewing the users, I came up with mainly two scenarios.

Scenario 1: Raphael is likely to miss a deadline in the office. Today he was even late to reach the office and had quickly parked his car in the parking lot. Unfortunately, he missed the deadline and got fired by his manager. To get some relief, he thought of visiting a close friend of his. He then reaches the parking lot but forgot where he had parked. Frustrated and nervous, he wanted some peace of mind to find his car without having to search for it.

Scenario 2: Today is Friday and Raphael is planning to travel to his hometown 100 km away. In the morning he parks his car in the office parking lot. By evening he plans to drive his car to the railway station and then board the pre-booked train at 6 PM. As it's Friday, and the traffic is pretty heavy, Raphael needs to quickly locate his car from the parking lot and drive to the railway station.

Task flow

Taking account of the emergency and ease of use in finding the car from the parking lot. I have wired out a task flow that is pretty simple as a piece of cake. Remember this task flow should not be as cumbersome as it might increase the stress of the employees.

Task Prioritization

Getting in all the information, my next job is to prioritize the task in a Frequency vs Importance Graph.

Solutions & Navigation Flow

Considering the above scenarios, I came up with a couple of solutions. All these solutions are incorporated using a GPS location tracker & Augmented Reality.

1. Park worry-free and go
2. Park, swipe, and go
3. Park, scan and go
4. Park anywhere and go

Solution 1: Park worry-free and go (Using RFID Tags)

The user need not take any effort in recording the parking slot. Each parking lot can be placed with an RFID Reader. When a car gets parked on the parking

slot, the RFID reader reads the RFID tag on the car and sends the parking lot info to the employee's mobile app automatically. The employee does not have to open the app to record this information. Upon the return of the employee, He can simply open the app and track the location of the car. They can either use GPS track or use Augmented Reality to guide and locate their car.

Wireframes

Solution 2: Park, swipe, and go (Using NFCs of Employee ID Card)

Each parking slot needs to have an NFC card reader. When the employee parks the car, he needs to swipe his ID card and the information about the parking slot is sent to his mobile app. Upon the return of the employee, he can simply open the app and track the location of the car.

Wireframes

Solution 3 — Park, scan, and go (QR Code Scan)

An employee drives into the Car Park and parks his car. The employee opens the app and scans the QR code in the car park slot. The car park slot information is then saved in the app.

Wireframes

Solution 4: Park anywhere and go (Intelligent Camera Systems & geo-fencing)

a. Intelligent AI Camera

b. Geo-fencing to detect entry and exit

Assuming that the user has his phone with him. An AI-based camera needs to be installed in the slot and a geofencing system is mapped for the entire parking building area. When the employee arrives in the slot, the AI camera reads the car number, identifies whose car it is, gets the GPS location of the car, and sends the park slot info to the employee owing that car, to the mobile app. Upon the arrival of the employee near the parking area building, the geo-fence detects the user and guides the user to the car park slot. Either through GPS Map or through AR.

Wireframes

Usability Testing

After the solutions and wireframing were done, a prototype usability testing was tested across a few of the users. The prototypes were shared across a few users through invision to test the viability of the design. Their feedback was collected and possible modifications also were made to the prototype design.

Conclusion

While performing the user interview, I noted down a few pain points and derived a few additional solutions for a better parking experience.

1. This is to display a huge board in front of the parking building. This board needs to show information on the floor numbers where the parking slots are free in real-time.
2. On arrival at the parking slot, there needs to be a green light indicator above each slot, indicating the free parking slots. So that the user does not have to look in search for empty space.
3. Reducing inefficient way of parking cars, cases when too much space is consumed in parking car where actually another car can fit in too.

This case study brought me additional insights into the pain points and possible solutions that can be implemented to make everyone's lives easy.

Follow our publication for more updates.